Conrad Challenge Microneedle

Why I Built This

Mental health is one of the biggest crises facing my generation, and yet the tools we have for monitoring it are shockingly primitive. If you want to track your heart rate, you strap on a watch and get continuous data. If you want to understand your mental health, you sit in a therapist’s office once a week and try to describe how you have been feeling. That gap between what we can measure physically and what we can measure mentally felt like a problem worth solving.

I started reading about biomarkers associated with depression — cortisol levels, serotonin metabolites, inflammatory markers like cytokines — and realized that these are measurable signals that fluctuate throughout the day. The issue is not that we cannot detect them. The issue is that current methods require blood draws in clinical settings, which means you get a single snapshot rather than a continuous picture. That is like trying to understand the weather by checking the temperature once a week.

What if you could monitor these biomarkers continuously, the same way a CGM tracks glucose for diabetic patients? That question became the foundation of this project.

What It Does

The core concept is a microneedle wearable device designed for continuous, minimally invasive monitoring of depression-related biomarkers in interstitial fluid. Microneedles are tiny enough to penetrate only the outermost layer of skin, reaching interstitial fluid without hitting nerves or blood vessels. This means the device can sample biomarkers painlessly and continuously.

The wearable collects data on key depression indicators and transmits readings to a companion app that tracks trends over time. Instead of relying on subjective self-reporting, patients and clinicians get objective, continuous data streams. A psychiatrist could see that a patient’s cortisol levels have been elevated for three days before the patient even notices their mood shifting. That is the kind of early warning system that could change how we treat depression.

I designed the sensing architecture to target multiple biomarkers simultaneously, because depression is not a single-variable condition. Tracking cortisol alone does not give you the full picture. By monitoring a panel of markers, the system provides a more nuanced view of a patient’s mental health trajectory.

The Business Side

This project was not just a technical exercise. For the Conrad Challenge, I developed a complete B2B go-to-market strategy alongside the device design. The reality of healthcare innovation is that even brilliant technology fails if you cannot get it into the hands of the people who need it.

I targeted psychiatric clinics and mental health practices as the initial market. The value proposition is straightforward: clinicians get continuous objective data that supplements their clinical judgment, leading to better treatment decisions and earlier interventions. The business model centers on the device hardware plus a subscription service for the data analytics platform.

I analyzed the competitive landscape, mapped out the regulatory pathway for a Class II medical device, built financial projections, and identified key partnerships needed for manufacturing and distribution. The strategy had to be realistic, not just optimistic. Healthcare is full of great ideas that never make it past the prototype stage because nobody thought about how to actually deploy them.

Impact

The project earned recognition as a Conrad Challenge Innovation Category Finalist in 2025, which was validating because the Conrad Challenge evaluates both technical innovation and business viability. The judges were not just looking at whether the technology was cool — they wanted to see a credible path to market.

What I am most proud of is the intersection this project sits at. It is not purely biotech and it is not purely business strategy. It forced me to think like an engineer and an entrepreneur simultaneously, understanding both the biological mechanisms that make the device work and the market dynamics that would make it viable. That dual lens is something I carry into everything I build now.

The mental health monitoring space is evolving rapidly, and I believe continuous biomarker tracking will become standard practice within the next decade. This project gave me a deep understanding of both the technical challenges and the commercial realities of making that future happen.